💬 Beliefs are the world’s most powerful network effects

Your weekly dose of new ideas & inspirations

Hey, Pritesh here. 👋

We’ve reached post #103 in this journey of discovering new ideas & inspirations.

Here’s a quick glance of today’s post:

📱 Power of defaults

3️⃣ Three rules of three

❓ Problem worth solving

🔎 Evaluating character

🧍 Lessons of showing up

And much more…

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And with that, let’s dive in.

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1. Power of defaults

Bookmark Julian’s essay “The power of defaults” for your weekend read (or primetime read, whatever works for you).

He talks of network effect(s), switching costs, multihoming costs & moats. These are ideas that you don’t think about every day. You don’t need to. However, this essay will make you connect with these. It shows a really good way to think about how technologies businesses are evolving (up the ladder or towards the stack). 

He has beautifully expanded his idea taking examples from Google, Apple & Facebook. It’s a piece from 2021, but provides a fairly relevant lens to look at each of these businesses and how they are building their moats. The metaphors of bits and atoms and layers - loved the overall narrative. A couple of highlights from the post:

There is no multihoming on the truth layer. You need a *single* source of truth. A default.

Beliefs are the world’s most powerful network effects.

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2. 3 Rules for better communication

Alan Alda’s “3 rules to express your thoughts” shares a pleasantly simple framework

1. Make no more than three points, 

2. Explain difficult ideas in three ways, and 

3. Repeating key points three times

That’s it. These are the three rules of three for you.

However, they are useful but not sufficient. There is a fourth element that is critical in establishing clarity - connect. Unless you put a genuine effort in connecting with your audience, you will be just performing and not communicating.

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3. Is there a problem?

A startup journey is never easy. From identifying the right problem to actually reaching a viable business outcome, you are facing one challenge after another. For a lot of us, we fail to recognize the challenges - sometime in the right order - and jump a hoop or two. It may not cause an immediate pain, but the burn over the life of the startup can be massive.

“Excuse me, is there a problem?” By Jason Cohen is a fantastic read to prepare you for this. Here’s a snapshot of his proposed approach.

Image source: A Smart Bear

I’ve been stuck at and discussing this first & second stage with so many of my friends & colleagues. It’s such a logical step, but gets skipped in many product journeys.

He has shared a simple estimation model to assess the potential of your idea. If you’re thinking of building something, this one will be well worth your time. 

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4. Design to Developer handoffs

In my recent projects, I’ve faced multiple challenges around suboptimal design to developer handovers. Helen Shabanova summarized the challenges involved in the process as below:

• Lack of technical knowledge at designer’s end.

• Lack or excess of detail in the handover process

• Incompatibility in tools used at two parties involved

• Lack of consistency with overall structure

• Different workflows between the two parties

• Lack of documentation and annotations resulting in difficulties in interpreting the nuances

While Helen’s post is focused on design to developer handoff, the symptoms listed above are applicable in any collaborative environment.

If you’re involved in the design/dev process, the essay has some good inputs on best practices.

If not, I’ve highlighted the problems to you already. See what you can do to resolve them in your handovers.

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5. Evaluating Character

Ted Gioia’s “8 best techniques for evaluating character” is one of those “I wish someone had told me these when I was younger” post. I have learnt & adopted some of these in my way of working, but the journey of discovering them was filled with trial errors.

Here’re my two key takeaways from the post, these are techniques I want to become better at:

1. Discover what experiences formed their character in early life

2. Watch how they handle unexpected problems

One technique that I am not fully agreeable to, but want to give some more thoughts to is “Identify what irritates people the most in others—because this is probably the trait they dislike most in themselves.” What do you think about this one?

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6. Light reads

Some interesting posts & essays that are well worth reading.

1. A few lessons on showing up by Lawrence Yeo. 

If you do something consistently for a long time, the people you see often are those that also exhibit that same consistency. In your eyes, this group will seem like the “regulars,” but in the eyes of most, they are individual outliers that exhibit a remarkable sense of commitment. 

2. Don't be a knee-jerk by Jason Fried

We don't want reactions. We don't want first impressions. We don't want knee-jerks. We want considered feedback. Read it over. Read it twice, three times even. Ponder. Sleep on it. Take your time to gather and present your thoughts — just like the person who pitched the original idea took their time to gather and present theirs.

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7. Everything else

Some random goodness from the internet:

1. No Name is a supermarket brand from Canada. Check out this google search result to see how they create a distinctive play in worlds of store labels. 

2. A brilliant visual essay about what we're searching for throughout the day, night and in between.

3. A history of the world according to Getty Images - Brilliant one. Watch this one for three reasons: 1) for the rare footage from the past, 2) beautiful storytelling of the footage & of the reason why this video was put together 3) a primer on copyright & public domain concepts of content. 

4. The birds who fly first class. A special from Now I know. After a long time! 

5. Neel.fun is back with Space Elevator. His creativity is through the roof.

The title of today’s post is from Julian’s post “Power of defaults”.

Before we sign off, here’s a quick poll for you. Pls do share your feedback, it helps make this newsletter better.

That's all for this week, folks!  

I hope I've earned the privilege of your time.

If you enjoyed this post, show your love by ❤️’ing it or leaving a comment or sharing it with a couple of your friends.